


Radio Silence

by shiplizard



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiplizard/pseuds/shiplizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hendricks screws his courage to the sticking place and makes a bold move, under threat of powerpoint and corporate boredom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Radio Silence

**Author's Note:**

> This was an LJ fic that got lost in the AO3 shuffle and was never posted along with the rest. It's circa 2009 (White Night was out) and so my Hendricks is a little rougher around the edges in this one.

Hendricks stood at the door of the conference room, hands behind his back, shoulders square. He had a headset on. Give him a pair of sunglasses and he could take down Keanu Reeves and that Moss chick with one hand behind his back.

Kind of overkill for an investor's meeting, though.

His eyes had started to glaze around hour two. He tried to follow for a while, but any time there seemed to be some kind of a point it sort of faded away in another big fog of numbers. Three tables clicked by on the projector-- he was ready to swear they were showing the same exact thing, just one was a pie and one was some bars. Really.

He looked at John. John was still watching the screen like it made sense, nodding, even asking questions.

Beside him, a tall blond was sitting in a power suit, eyes glazed like a bathroom window. Gard was amazing, this axe swinging Xena kick-ass gun toting babe from heaven. He'd seen her heal up from a slice across the gut. Seen her take on demons from hell. Actual hell.

And it turned out that powerpoint was her kryptonite. Apparently you didn't really learn to deal with animated slides in... Valkyrie college. 

He cleared his throat very quietly.

"Hendricks to Gard," he muttered into the little receiver of his headset. "Do you read?"

The blond bombshell blinked, her eyes focusing. She pressed a hand to her earpiece, very serious, and nodded.

"You as bored as I am?"

Her brows furrowed, and she frowned. "Yes. Yes," she murmured, just shy of sub-audible, her voice husky in his ear. "It is very serious."

"That last chart was the same as the one before it, right?"

"Yes. I think that is the situation." Her faint accent made it sound like a big deal, anything she was talking about. The people around her were deliberately not listening to whatever important Security stuff was going on.

He caught her eye and nodded, then stood quietly for a minute, rocking very slowly on the balls of his feet.

"Do you know what would be great," he said after another minute of text-boxes flying across the screen. 

"Mm?" she answered, without moving her lips, but with the volume up he caught the question clearly.

"The guy with the laser pointer rips off his face and he's a bug demon." 

Her jaw clenched, eyes widening slightly, and she cupped her face in one hand to hide the sudden smile. "Then we could shoot him," she murmured wistfully.

"Pump him full of lead, smash the window, toss him. See how he handles forty stories." 

She gave a happy little sigh that pretty much made his day-- how many guys got to be the reason for a sound like that?-- and straightened up in her chair, watching the screen with new attention.

Cool. He looked around the room, making a note of everyone there, looking for the telltale signs of smuggled weapons, the jittery vibe a guy put off right before he sprung an ambush. 

Nothing. Not so much as a rubber band gun. His shoulders drooped a little. He killed another fifteen minutes reciting all the people's names in his heads and what companies they were from, picturing the dossiers. The guy with the laser pointer was talking something about the projected market share of... something, something something.

"Gard to Hendricks," a soft voice whispered into his ear.

He straightened up again, staring straight ahead.

"I read."

"What if the ones with the laptops are Black Court?"

"The one with the little thin Air notebook is the sorcerer." 

"I take the three closest to Baron. You take two near the door," Gard said, eyes narrowing. "I suggest close range, execution style to the skull, before that one in the pencil skirt can move." 

"Window's still broken from the bug demon. Swing the desk chair into the beam and fry the one."

"The second one also is cajun-street pizza," Gard gloated. 

"I use the one in the cheap shoes as a vampire shield when the sorcerer throws a curse, then I brain him with the ornamental plant." 

"I use the garlic dip sauce from the pizza lunch to blind the third one near me, then toss you a pack of it." 

"I garlic-spray the sorcerer, then you take his head off with your Bowie knife. Just one-two punch with the blade out like that Diesel movie."

Gard choked back a giggle, and Hendricks became uncomfortably aware that their voices had been slowly rising. On first look, though, nobody'd noticed.

He looked away to get his face back together. When he looked back towards the table, he met a stare like a laser beam, gray-green and a little ticked off. One of Johnny's weapons-grade eyebrow raises was leveled right at him.

He cleared his throat and straightened up with a nod. Point taken. 

John gave him a friendly smile that meant 'you better take my point, punk' and then turned straight around and interrupted the laser-pointer-guy to explain something from the last slide.

Gard stared at the projector screen. Hendricks looked out the window and pretended he was following the progress of a sniper on the building across from them.

A few minutes later, Hendricks was pretty sure John wasn't looking-- really not looking, not just not looking like he wasn't looking. He twitched a shoulder, fidgeted. Then again.

Gard snuck a glance black at him.

Hendricks broke into slow military hand signals. _You. Me. Two man team. Surveillance._

She arched an eyebrow with interest.

Hendricks looked warily at Johnny, summoned up his courage, and then made another hand signal. This one wasn't in any military or mercenary lexicons, but any kid who'd ever played charades knew it-- miming a hand-cranked camera. 'Film.'

Gard looked away sharply.

STUPID STUPID STUPID. Never date on the job. Especially not women way out of your league. DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB.

The Valkyrie had picked up her pen and was drumming it on the table in irritation. Hendricks set his jaw and stared ahead of him, trying to lose himself in fantasies of homicidal businessmen like he usually did, and mostly just getting stuck on how goddamn dumb he was.

That, and the soft tap of Gard's pen, that was drumming into his head like-

He went very still, then looked at Gard.

She looked at him and started the pattern over.  
LONG short short . Short short. LONG short. LONG short.

 _D-I-N-N-E-R-1-S-T,_ she tapped out, and her eyebrow was the question mark on the end. 

Heart pounding in his chest like he was prepping for a commando raid on a Red Court base, he nodded once.

Gard flashed the tiniest little smile at him, one that made her eyes sparkle. Then she looked away, cheeks coloring a little.

Hendricks pressed his shoulderblades into the wall behind him and shifted into the shadow of the big potted plant until the huge blush died away. Fortunately, he'd managed to stop looking like a boiled lobster before the meeting broke up-- he even kept his cool when Gard brushed his hand on the way out.

Okay. That had gone well. Mission accomplished, and nobody had-

He realized he was being watched, and while he'd usually take that as a sign that he was losing his edge... it was the boss. The boss had a way of sneaking up on you. 

The boss also had a way of looking like your high school football coach telling you that you were a good man, by God, even if he was actually some punk who was a whole year older than you and you'd known him since before he knew how to wear Armani. 

It wasn't fair.

"Have her back by eleven, Mister Hendricks," John said, and left him alone in the conference room.

This time he was taking no chances. He locked the door before he did the victory dance.


End file.
